Golf Ball

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1. Make a new canvas. Here, I used 800 x 800 pixels, 72 dpi, RGB, background white
2. Invert your background to make it black
2. Make a new layer
3. Use your circular marquee to draw a circle and fill it with white

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4. Make a new document, 20 pixels x 20 pixels, RGB, background transparent
5. Use your circular marquee to draw a circle and fill it with black

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6. Edit: Define pattern (call it Dimples)
7. Go back to your original document (Ctrl-Tab) and make a new layer
8. Ctrl-click Layer 1 (the white circle you created) and press Shift-Delete to bring up your Fill options dialogue
9. Select Pattern, and fill with your Dimples pattern

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10. Press Ctrl-T to bring up Free Tansform and rotate this layer 45 degrees. Press Enter.
11. Filter:Blur:Gassian Blur 2.0 pixels
12. Now Ctrl-click Layer 1, and hit Ctrl-F to repeat the blur

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13. Filter>Distort>Spherize 100%

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14. Now we'll finish the map by creating the contour of the ball itself. Press D to reset your palette, press X to invert the colours, and select your gradient tool (G).
15. Select radial gradient, foreground to background and change the opacity to 50%. Make sure your original circle is still selected, and draw a gradient from the center of the circle to the outer edge

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Now we have a successful map to apply lighting effects.
16. Create a new layer, hold down alt, and merge visible. This will be our rendering channel. Select all, copy, create a new channel, and paste.
17. Hit RGB composite, and go back to the merged layer
18. Press Shift-Delete and fill with 50% Grey
19. Now go into Filter:Render:Lighting effects
Now here's where the fun begins. you can create whatever lighting you like. For this one in particular, I used a spotlight and an omni light. Change your texture channel to Alpha 1 (the one we created) and set white is high and height 50.

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20. Hit okay.

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21. Now we'll delete the extra material. Ctrl-click the original circle layer, invert the selection, and hit Backspace. Good. It's just a little harsh. No sweat, we'll lighten it up a bit with levels.

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22. Press Ctrl-L to go into levels, and drag the Black triangle on the gradient at the bottom of the dialogue up to 125. I also brought the grey point down to 1.30

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22. Now we'll just finish it up with some layer effects. Hide the two source layers, and double click the final render to get into layer effects.
Here I used the following...
Inner Shadow
Hard Light with Black
Angle -159
Distance 49 px
Choke 0%
Size 62 px
Colour Overlay
Blending mode Color
Colour #929AA0
Opacity 100%
Gradient Overlay
Blending Mode Overlay
Style: Linear
Angle 24 degrees
Scale 70%
I also made the background white again.
Here is the final before touhups...

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Realistic rope in Photoshop

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Create a new document.

The size here is really important because it will determine the angle of the coil. In this example I used 600x600. Look at the 2 examples at the end of the tutorial, the variation was created on 800x600, notice that the angle is a little wider and less round. Personally I think I prefer the 800x600, but experiment with different sizes and see how you like the results.
Create a new layer and choose filter>sketch>halftone pattern.
Size =2 (use higher for a higher res image)
Push the contrast pretty high

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Now rotate the pattern by pressing cmd/ctrl+T for free transform and then pulling one of the corners around.
(You may enlarge the pattern to fill more of the page if you wish.)

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To give a more frayed look add some noise: filter>noise>add noise

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Make a selection with the rectangular marquee tool.
This will be a strand of rope

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Press Cmd/ctrl+J to copy the selection to a new layer.
Hide the layer underneath by clicking on the eye icon.
Position the rope near the center of the page

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Lets make it coil… filter>distort>polar coordinates and choose rectangular to polar.

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Te contrast between the black and white is too strong, lets tone it down a bit by choosing the levels control. Cmd/ctrl+L
Move the bottom slider (shown) to the right to tone down the shadows.

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Lets add some depth.
Press the little “f” in the layers palette to open the layer styles.
Choose inner shadow. Use the setting here

Also add a drop shadow as shown.

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Press ok and you will see a realistic loop of rope.

Duplicate the layer 4 or 5 times and stack them as shown, we now have the coil.

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Now for the end of the rope:
Show the pattern layer again and make a selection and copy it to a new layer just like we did before. (cmd/ctrl+J)

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Rotate the rope 90 deg.

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To make it “wiggle” filter>distort>shear
Click to add points and drag as shown.
Press ok

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Let’s blend it in.
Add a layer mask by clicking the new layer mask icon in the layers palette.

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Choose a large soft black brush and paint the very end of the rope and notice it will fade smoothly into the coil.

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To the left is our final rope with a little hue/saturation added to give it a hint of color.

Here is a variation with a wider canvas width and a different hue/saturation value applied. I also nudged a couple of the “coils” so they were not so perfect. This results in a more natural finish.

Kiosk Orbs in Photoshop

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Step 1. make a simple circle with your circular marquee tool. Red makes for a nice colour, but you can go with anything you like.

Step 2. Give the circle a innerglow layer effect, just change the glow colour to black and the blendmode to multiply. Why am I using the Inner glow instead of the inner shadow? Because inner glow doesn't have an angular deflection, and thus is easily uniform.

Step 3. Load the selection from the circular area and on a new layer drag the linear gradient (white to transparent) downwards from top (close to the bottom but not completely bottom).

Step 4. Now press Ctrl/Cmd+T to transform the white gradient. Drag the handles to bring it upwards halfway through, and drag it in a bit in from the top and sides.

Create a merge composite layer: Hide the background - Create a new blank layer on top and then Press Alt+Ctrl+Shift+E (Option+Cmd+Shift+E on Mac) to create a merged layer on top.

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Step 5. take the merged layer and create a circular selection above. the circle should be much larger than the original circle. Again use your eyes to tell you what seems right, then copy the section and paste it in to a new layer. This creates the top portion of the orb. Place it again in the proper exact position.

Step 6. Now to go onto the base of the orb. In a new layer create an eleptical shape that fits into the lower half of the circle. Duplicate this layer and reduce the size a little, as shown in fig.6.

Step 7. Select the larger elipse layer and load its selection by pressing Ctrl/Cmd and clicking on the layer thumbnail. Now select the cylindrical gradient tool and going with the grey-white-grey-white-grey colour combo, drag across.

Step 8. Duplicate this layer too and bring the duplicate upwards, as shown. Now place the white small portion up above the actual gradiated layer. Place it as shown in fig.8. Link both layers and reduce their size by a bit, so that the outer gradiated elipse is just a bit within the red circle.

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Step 9. Take the duplicated gradient layer and again select it , now giving it a slightly different gradient of greys and whites. Now bring the duplicated gradient layer down. arrange it beneath both the other layers, and position as shown in fig.9. It should be a visible from both sides as it is the rim of the orb.

Step 10. Now to remove the portions of the orb that aren't required. As before by keeping Ctrl/Cmd pressed and clicking on the layer thumbnails; first select the large outer rim elipse (with the gray gradient) and then Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+Click on the thumbnail of the the upper top portion layer (created in step 5).

You will now have the 2 elipses selected. We want to also select the bottom portion of the orb. Choose the Rectangular marquee tool hold down shift and drag over the bottom portion. Inverse the selection (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+I) and delete the middle portion of the orb. The figure should look as it is in Fig.10.

Step 11. Now to create the glass portion. Create a circle of the same size of the orb, any colour you want. Place it behind the other layers.

Step 12. As with the initial outer orb, give it the same kind of innerglow effect, and now bring it forward so as to cover all but the red outer portions of the orb.

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Step 13. Now goto the layer palette and make the fill amount =0. This makes the layer invisible, but keeps the layer effects visible, as shown in Fig.13.

Step 14. As you had done with the red circle, ie, creating a white gradient reflection, create the same in a new layer above the glass layer, so as to create a more realistic lighting effect. Adjust the settings as required to make it as realistic looking as possible.

Step 15. Now select the base layers, ie the grey metal gradient layers and the white elipse, and merge them together. After this press Cntrl+U to adjust the hue of the layer. Since it's grey, click on colorize, and adjust to a redish colour in keeping with the colour of the orb itself.

Step 16. Finally give a very slight drop shadow to the upper portion of the red orb, just to attain more realism. Secondly the lower portion seems off. SO create a new layer above the red lower orb portion. Then select the radial gradient tool, and select the white to nothing option. Now drag from somewhere above the red to a little bit in. Erase portions that arent contained within the red portion. Check Fig.16. to see the effect.

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You orb is ready. You can display any items in there now, just make sure any Items kept in have a good reflection added on. This will give the base a shiny appearance.

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Shown here are my futuristic orb kiosks, and the final version of my cover for BT Leather. See this as more of a tutorial that helps you to understand how to play around with your imaginative abilities and create stuff

Create a Sunset in less than a minute

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Open the image that you want to work with and also open any image of a sunset.

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Choose Image>Adjustments>Match Color

The Match Color dialog box will open. We will only need to use 2 settings for the task at hand.

Under Source, click the drop down menu and select the image of the sunset. There will be a thumbnail for you to check that you have selected the correct image.

Turn on the preview option if it isn’t already. The working image will now take on the color attributes of the sunset image. Most probably the effect will be a bit too much.

Adjust the Fade slider until you are happy with the result. Move it to the left for more of the inherited color and to the right for the original color.

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When you are satisfied, click the OK button to apply the changes. There are many things that can be done with this new Filter in Photoshop CS including using the match color to remove a color cast in a single click.

Masking out Difficult Images in Photoshop

It would be very difficult and time consuming to separate this image from its background because of the complexity and fine detail involved with the feathers on the lady’s headdress. This tutorial will focus on using Channels to help mask out a complex objects with clean edges. This technique will also save you a lot of time. The initial goal is to separate the feathers from the pink background on the left side of the face, there are lots of places where tiny bits of pink are showing through the feathers

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Make a duplicate layer of the image. This way the original is preserved on the background and we are working on a duplicated layer. Hide the background by clicking off its visibility icon. Choose Select>Color Range from the Menu. When the Color Range Dialog box open, choose the Left Eye Dropper tool and click on the background color in the image window (pink). You will see the selected color turn white in the dialog box. More the Fuzziness slider until the image is mostly black and the background is a clean as you can get it. Tip: To add a color to the selection click on the eyedropper tool with the plus sign and click in the image. Click ok

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With the selection active, switch to the Channels palette. Click the save selection as channel button, it’s the second one to the left on the bottom of the channels palette. A new alpha channel will now be visible. Press “Ctrl/Cmd+D” to Deselect and click on Alpha 1 in the channels palette. The main window will now turn black and white. The advantage of using a channel is the ability to fine tune the selection without effecting the original image. Black represents the areas that we want to keep and white, the areas to be discarded.

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Notice that there are areas of gray, these would be semi-transparent and need to become solid black and white (except for areas that should be semi transparent such as soft edges). There are tiny dots also visible, there will make for a very messy selection. Here is a quick solution that I have come up with: Click Image>Adjustments>Levels..
In the levels Dialog box, click the black point slider on the left and drag it to the right until the gray areas have become a solid black, Slide the White point slider to the left until the whites are nice and clean and the grainy effect has gone. Click ok to apply.

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Time to fine tune the mask. Choose a black brush and make the edge hard. Paint over all the areas that belong in the object to mask out. Use a larger brush for large areas and a smaller brush for finer detail such as around the feathers. Use a white paint color to paint out the areas that should be removed.

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Sometimes it can be hard to guess which part of the image belongs in the foreground and a peek at the original image is needed. Click on eye icon to the left of RGB at the top of the Channels palette (Fig 5). The original photo is now visible and the mask appears as a reddish color. Click the eye icon to go back to the mask view. The mask can also be hidden by toggling the eye (visibility icon). Keep going until you have a clean mask.

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Hold Cmd(Ctrl PC) and click on the Alpha 1 thumbnail. You will now see an active selection. Click on RGB to see the color image. Open the layers palette. Select the working layer and press the Delete key (Backspace on Windows). The masked area of the backround will now be removed to reveal a nice clean masking effect. At this point In am only worried about removing the pink background on the left.

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If there are areas that still need to be removes such as on the right side of this image, repeat the proceeding steps. Because each image is unique, some will need several passes and some can be done in a single pass. As you can see, this technique is very effective and the image can be dropped onto any background. Look at the top left of the image to see how precise the cut out is on the detailed feathers. Try that with the pen tool!